Moses Amedu, acting general secretary of the National Union of Electricity Employees, North-West zone has said that 60 percent of Nigerians are without public power supply.
Only 40 percent of Nigerians have access to electricity. Those connected to the grid are plagued by frequent outages.
Amedu who spoke in Kaduna said that the Power Holding Company of Nigeria is not ripe for privatisation.
“We have told Nigerians that in our present state of development the electricity company is not ripe for privatization because there are a lot of things that are not in place,” he said.
He said: “For instance we do not have adequate supply of electricity, you will find out that in the whole country, less than 45 percent of Nigerians have access to electricity and that means over 60 percent are still without electricity. Private individuals will do anything possible to make profit and if government is not ready to extend electricity to this 60 percent, is it the private man that is going to do it?
“The duty of government is to develop the country and now that they are thinking of privatization the implications are many; we are going to get to a situation where even the woman on the street selling pure water will not be able to sell it because the cost of freezing the water will be so high that people will prefer drinking water from the well. Look at our industries, most of them are going to die because the cost of electricity is going to hike and it is already going up. If the cost of generator is up and the electricity tariff is up, then definitely the cost of goods is going to be very high.” He added